Mrs. W. has made me issue a WARNING that this video is, once again, NOT Grated – (it’s not cheddar, woman, but WUTeva…) and such behavior is not approved or condoned by the members and staff at SparkySpitfire Internationale, blah, blah, blah, but enjoy it anyway.
fanks to Nelayme for posting this thought-provoking and informative vid.
Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there. Are you one of the roadies? or a guest? Cuz roadies need to go in the back entrance. Guests, I’m afraid, will just has to be patient and wait out front behind teh red velvet ropes. Sorry. We still has a lot of set up to do for my birfday.
But, since you’re here (and since you got past the Bouncer, who I’m gonna have to talk to ’bout that), why don’t you come wif me to the tree fort to see all the fun we have planned. Watch out for the Caterers. They still have a lot of ice statues to set up. Oh! Be careful. You don’t want to trip over teh cat niptini fountain. Ah, here we go. The DJ’s have arrived.
(Sounds good, but mebbe a little more bass? fanks guys)
Okay, let’s see…we also has lots of good noms on hand. My human sistah, Whozshe, just got back from NYC, where she picked up teh finest in treats at a fancy SoHo taxidermy shop (which, I fink, is French, for “Cat Deli”).
would you like a bat wing? or a freeze-dried mousie? Not cheap, that’s for sure, but we are a family of foodies, so we hate to skimp on teh finer fings in life. Besides. It’s not evaday you turn 2.
Also, we have a great entertainment lineup. I hate to spoil the surprise, but we were able to book a huge International A-lister. Let’s just say I was able to help him out of a jam wif teh INS.
oh, look! there’s his limo now. omc, look at the size of his entourage! i better go. Boy, a birfday is a lot work if you want it done right, but i also really want this party to be special – a way to say FANKS to all my bloggie friends. Looks like it will be another year o’ fun, thanks to you.
Shout outs and Purrs to all my Furry Friends,
Sparky Spitfire
FANKS! to DJ Larson for the scratching kitten vid and to Studio Vaayuu for teh Basket Kitteh Gagnam!
Is it? I sure teh heck hope not.
Listen – I was zooming through the house last night; climbing bookshelves and shredding chair legs, you know, the usual low-impact cardio that keeps my engine running while I wait for some kindly teenager to march home and leave the barn door wide open for me to dash back outside- you know, a typical quiet evening, WHEN, to EVAone’s horror, Mrs. Whatsername, put down her Vodka Tonic and informed me that I “need a boyfriend.” That this would, somehow, help me “calm me teh frack down.”
Or somefing like that. Hard to tell, what with all her slurring…but now I have to know – Is that true? would Love make me dream dreamy dreams of stud muffin mancats? Would love make me go so whispy-eyed and soft focus that i forget to devour teh fishy or knock over the flowers?
Would Love put my Crazy Pants NRG to better use?
Cuz I have to admit, I do find this picture intriguing. He is verrah handsome, isn’t he? Mr. Wide Collar, there, wif his older and wiser mancat reading glasses. I’ll bet he was her Professor – Caterature or PawlySci, probably, and he wowed her wif his superior intellect and constant name-dropping of famous cats he’d met…
“really?’ she’d gush, “Lunch? at the White House? wif Socks?!’
Then he’d take a real interest in helping her broaden her horizons…he’d make vague promises of taking her on a “international conference” that really only ended up taking place in the dumpster behind teh library. Then, after a few of these private “colloquiums,” he suddenly wasn’t so interested in her “thesis” anymore. Suddenly became aloof; started grading a little harsher than was fair; suddenly became very difficult to corner. Like he was avoiding her vacant yellow-eyed stare or something.
But it was not like she was going to tell the Dean or the Administration or anything. she just wanted one more night of love! just like they used to have, the two of them, together! Once more, she promised him, and then she’d gracefully bow out of his life. So now she’s waiting for him to show up. Wif her pet piraña and teh sweet and dainty Derringer pistol she has tucked into her pretty little purse, specially for teh occassion.
“Oh. He’ll come,” she tells herself.
Teh pictures she promised to send to his wife, of their night of “research” should do teh trick.
Now, see how wrong you are again, Mrs. W? As intriguing as Love and Boyfriends and Walking Fishies may be, I really am a little too bizzy for that kind of nonsense. I have trees to climb. If Professor LeisureSuit wants to follow me up a tree, we can talk. But i do plan to leave before things get too collegial. and I get to eat teh flowers.
Good Luck, Blue Kitteh, where eva you are! Cod knows you will need it. And fanks to imgur.com for the great photo!
My brother Taffy actually has something say! And believe it or not, it may actually be interesting and relevant. AND about LOVE. Crazy, right? Let me just say I’m just as shocked as you. So here he is with a Public Service Announcement: a mancat’s point of view of the inner workings of a flower shop, just before some sort of major Romance-related holiday. Or so he says. Wif out further ado, I give you Taffy Boy, Floral Kitteh-in-Chief!
The place is crazy full of flowers and sticks and leaves 
- and none – NONE! of it is nip or silver vine or anything remotely delightful like that. In fact, the whole shop smells distinctly of sticky sweet narcissus and indigestible chocolates. According to Taffs, the boxes do come loaded with things like strings and shredded papers, but the shop peeps rip right through the box, 
totally ignore the play-potential all around them and then “ooooh” and “ahhhhhh” about a bunch of angiosperms. 
He says it’s baffling. “yes, I’m sure the orchids will match her dress. promise!”
“yes, I can fit all of Shakespeare’s sonnet #18 on the little card. promise!”
“yes, we can deliver it to your houseboat on the Potomac river at low tide. promise!”
“yes. she’s going to love it. promise.”
Next week, I plan to eat a bunch of grass and then “re-gift” it into her house slipper. So that when she bends down to cleans it up, I can give her a head bonk and we can enjoy our fleeting moment of beauty together.first, something easy.
Now, for advanced students:
I am studying now. Gonna float those moles right outta ground. The rest of you, good lucks. And remember:
-Professor Yoda
(fanks to AllHailHypnoT0ad and FinalCutKing for the great videos!)
Some of you know that my backyard is akshully all of Washington DC, and I could scurry to the Whitehouse any time I want – through the storm drain and down that hill, past the statue of the horse trying to buck the guy offa his back – but I haven’t yet, cuz I been busy. But, being so close to teh action and all does put me in a unique position to opine about the crucial inner workings of the White House. Namely, its cats.
The Oval Office has been graced by quite a few distinguished felines, but we first must honor the President who went out of his way to love kittehs in and out of the White House – the esteemed cat lover Abraham Lincoln. 
The Lincolns came to the White House with the first ever First Cat, Tabby, a tabby cat just like me, so another reason I am an expert in this regard. When asked by reporters about her husband’s hobbies, Mrs. Lincoln replied “cats.” The Great Emancipator played with kittehs ”for hours.” The man had lots of works to do; saving the Union and freeing slaves and all that, and humans just can’t reach that level of Greatness without regular stress-reducing tete-a-tete negotiations and chase-the-string summits with kittehs.
White House staff was always trying to hurry Mr. Lincoln along on his busy-ness of healing the Union, but this never stopped him from playing with cats everywhere. Three weeks before the end of the war, on his way to send a telegraph to General Grant, Lincoln stopped to pick up three stray kittens. He held them in his lap, and loved on them while assistants fidgeted and cleared their throat and said, repeatedly, “Mr. President, the General is waiting…” But Mr. Lincoln only wanted to know about the kitten’s mommy. When told she was dead, the Great Emancipator replied “Then she can’t grieve as many a poor mother is grieving for a son lost in battle.” He then issued a Presidential decree that “ these poor little motherless waifs are given plenty of milk and treated kindly.”
Taking care of things smaller and sweeter than ourselves only makes it easier to take care of a whole Union of Humans, and Mr. Lincoln knew that better than anybuddy.
Thanks to The National Park Service and The Abraham Lincoln Research Site for the dets on this great story!
photo courtesy of AtypicalArt
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atypicalart/
In today’s Cats o’ History, we remember the esteemed Dr. Snowball, the first Psychicatrist to delve into the scary depths of the Human Mind, such as it is. Here we see her with her first patient, “That Nice Lady,” who Dr. Snowball diagnosed with cat-hexis, ”the attachment, conscious of unconscious, of emotional feelings and significance to an idea, an object, or most commonly, a cat.”
Humans have never been fully cured of this sad affliction. Today, Cat-hexic humans are lucky to have cat blogs and LOL’s and Nyan Cats to help get through the day, like little online shots of feline methadone. But back in teh day, Dr. Snowball had only paws-on therapy and Tuff Loves at her disposal.
That Nice Lady’s affliction was so severe that she not only indulged in delusions that she was a cat, but also that her children were “kittens” as well. After years of watching That Nice Lady attempt to meow and play “like a real cat,” Dr. Snowball took action. She sat Nice Lady down on the couch and let her prattle on and on about how she wished she were a kitteh, how she would sleep all day and drink milks from little bowls, etc. etc.
Nice Lady said a lot of other things too, but the good Dr. fell asleep at some point because it got a little boring and frankly, pathetic. But after that little nap, Dr. Snowball commenced treatment by stretching her long and lovely belly out on Nice Lady’s lap, curling her pink little toes, and blinking her emerald eyes, which, as we all know today, is the most effective way to deliver the truth to Delusional Humans:
“You will never be this beautiful. Please get over it.”
The treatment was so effective that Nice Lady had a stunning break-through, or in medical terms, a cat-harsis. She never whined about not being a kitteh again. Here we see her bravely facing the awful truth with her daughter; a Nice Lady in her own right too, but Not A Cat.
thanks to our friend at Atypical Art for the photo! http://www.flickr.com/photos/atypicalart/
This very first air-to-land communication, sent from the Airship America to a human secretary sitting in a little field office in Atlantic City, is yet another technologiCATical break-through. Or break down, as the case may be, cuz, see, Kiddo was never asked if he wanted to be in this over-sized balloon. No one ever fully ‘splained how he would be the first Airship Cat and float a billion miles in the air, over a billion bathtubs full of salt water. No, the humans really dropped the ball here. The crew coulda guessed that he was gonna run around like a “squirrel in a cage” long before he got on board the rickety Airship with its slightly-bigger-than-a-bicycle-basket gondola. Woulda saved evabuddy lots of troubles. But no.
“Let’s take Kiddo on board! He’ll be good luck!” sez the crew.
“Sure thing. Let’s also bring this new fangled wireless radio so we can tell people on land how much Kiddo loves being tossed to and fro over the chopping waves of the Atlantic with a hurricane on the way!” sez Melvin Vaniman, the First Engineer.
Akshully, Mr. Melvin doesn’t even know ’bouts the hurricane, being a human and all. Humans, as you know, suffer from Obvious Danger Myopia. Also, Incurably Inconsiderate Disorders. Like how Mr. Vaniman is surprised that Kiddo doesn’t appreciate the ship sudddenly shooting from an altitude of 200 feet to 3,600 and then later plunging so low that it scrapes the masts of schooners floating below. No. This is no time for teh hints.
So Kiddo had no choice but to Freak Out. Even then the crew doesn’t get it. In fact, they were so freaked out by Kiddo’s freak-out that they stuffed him into a bag and tried to lower it into a boat. But the water is so choppy that the humans on the boat can’t get ahold of the Bag o’ Kiddo, and our little hero is dunked in the water a few times like a furry burlap donut until finally they give up and hoist the poor hysterical guy back on board the Airship and then toss him into a hammock and cover him with a blanket to calm down. And then someone finally they says, “Gee. Maybe it’s not safe up here.” And under the blanket, Kiddo screams “YA THINK?!”
Kiddo did calm down, but only because the storm passed. Later, the navigator, Murray Simon, the only human on board equipped with the powers of observation, finally notices that Kiddo makes an excellent barometer.
“You must never cross the Atlantic in an airship without a cat…this cat has always indicated trouble well ahead. Two or three times when we thought we were ‘all in’ he gave most decided indications that he knew we would be shortly getting it in the neck.”
Kiddo is, of course, thinking ‘in the neck, with my claws, you morons.’ But he remains polite and does not kill the humans, recognizing their inherent worth as fellow creatures of the Earth who know how to land this dumb balloon. But after 72 hours of flight (a new record in Airborn Pigheaded Stubbornness), the crew concedes that Kiddo was right all along and they drop like a rock into the ocean and wait patiently to be fished out of the Atlantic. 
“Thrilling rescue at sea!” the newspaper sez. ”Come to our Hero’s Parade!” The Mayor sez.
But Kiddo sez nothing. He is so done with talking. He is done with trying to reason with these humans. He high-tails it to Gimbles Department store where the store manager has created a home for him in the front window display; a cushy spot in a safe, stationary, ground-hugging gilded cage with lots of non-helium filled satin pillows. And he is not moving.
Thanks to Purr N Fur , the Telegraph UK and to the book “Animals Aloft,” by Allan Janus, for the dets on this story. Illustration artwork by Andrew Bell and available for purchase at his website
Oh, hello. It’s you again. You came just in time for some fun. 
See how the house is a mess? Boxes everywhere. Noises and commotions and running arounds. I love it. I love boxes. I love commotion. I love it when the doors bang open-shut, open-shut, and the Humans run back and forth with their arms full of the stuffs they own. It’s like we’re all playing some kind of speedy game of fetch.
“Where is your soap? Where are the bed sheets? Did you pack an umbrella?” Right now, Mrs. Whatsername and one of my human brothers, the one I call Big Whoozhe (cuz there are two and I can never remember their names), are playing a game of hot-potato with some house slippers. She keeps saying “to keep your feet warm” and he keeps saying “my feet ARE warm.”
These are strenuous games and have been going on all morning, which is why Mrs. Whatsername has to go to her room from time to time to lie down and cry.
I’m not so sure why she is so sad, cuz I have heard that Big Whoozhe is going study with the esteemed Professor Rufus Bobcat. Evabuddy knows Professor Rufus. Here you can see one of his many important lectures.
and here you can see the Big Whoozhe is already the number one student at Bobcat University! 
I wish him well and hope he learns all kind of things like flying tackles and Buckeye smashing and other important life skills.
Go Cats!
Does your human insist on picking you up? Don’t it just want to make you scream? All that bare skin rubbing up against your fur… all those scratchy petroleum-based fiber clothes doused in Spring™ Mountain © Freshness,® and sweat…all those nonsense words coming out of their lumpy potato faces. Why do they sound like they’re mouths are constantly full of food? ”Mumblety-bumblety kitty kitty kitty.” I mean, what does that even mean? And, of course, this always happens just after you’ve given yourself a lovely bath, am I right? Or maybe you made the mistake of giving them a polite hello or asking about dinner time and the next thing you know, you’re flying through the air and the stinky rub-fest begins. Just thinking about it gives me both heebees AND jeebees. Excuse me while I shake violently all over.
Okay, that’s better. It is a problem for many of us, especially those who were born with an Incurably Adorable Condition, which, come to think of it, is most of us. Here then, Loyal Fur Fans, is my five point Exit Strategy:
Step One: politely ask to be let down.
Step Two: Squirm. Gain claw traction on a shoulder or exposed belly as you proceed to…
Step Three: flip over and squirm some more
Step Four: disappear like your life depended upon it.
Yes, I realize it is a five point plan with only four steps, but that’s only because I am so good at it. You may need all five, or as many as 15, or, in the case of really big block-headed humans, just go straight to the shredding of the face. I, however, raise my Humans in a Cruelty-free Environment and so far I haven’t needed to go down that road. But it’s always good to have a back up plan.
